Fender Announces American Design Experience

Scottsdale, AZ (March 20, 2014) -- Fender is pleased to announce the American Design Experience, an innovative new offering on Fender.com that allows consumers to design electric guitars and basses based on Fender’s iconic instruments – the Telecaster, Stratocaster, Precision Bass and Jazz Bass guitars. Consumers’ personalized designs are then built by hand in Fender’s flagship Corona, Calif.-based facility and delivered to their door within 90 days.

The Fender American Design Experience began in 2011 at the Fender Visitor Center in Corona, located adjacent to Fender’s factory. There, consumers have been able to hand-select instrument bodies and necks, and personally design their own unique instrument, before having it built and delivered to them within a matter of months. Now, Fender is able to provide this program only to people throughout the United States via an innovative digital platform configurator tool.

Several professional artists have designed their own personalized instruments with the American Design Experience, including Neon Trees’ Branden Campbell, The Cult’s Billy Duffy, thenewno2’s Dhani Harrison, Joe Robinson, and Taylor Swift’s Amos Heller. Consumers can view these artists’ personal designs, and others’, on Fender’s website for design inspiration.

"This is an opportunity to create something that is at once iconic and uniquely yours,” said Heller. … “The (American Design Experience) allows me to express myself not only with my playing, but with the design of the instrument itself.”

Company founder and music industry innovator, Leo Fender, created some of the most successful and beloved instruments of the 20th century thanks, in part, to his steadfast dedication to an instrument’s form and function, which ultimately led to their unique modular designs allowing players to modify various elements of their instruments quickly and easily.

"I've always loved the vintage hot rod vibe that Fender brings with their guitars,” said Campbell. “I've often had to buy two different basses to piece together all the features I wanted. Now, I have the option to get what I want the first time.”

Within the new online offering, there are multiple options – including body and neck woods and designs, color finishes, pickup and electronics configurations, and more – that lead the user to more than a million potential design outcomes.

“We live in an era of personalization, and few things make a greater statement about people than the music they listen to – your music and how it represents your individual identity,” said Justin Norvell, vice president of Marketing for Fender. “Fender’s entire existence embodies that very concept, because its instruments have always been modular in construction, which has always made them ideal for individual personalization. And the online American Design Experience is the next level of that whole concept – built to an individual player’s specs straight from the factory floor.”

Fender American Design Experience instruments are backed by the company’s limited lifetime warranty, and come with an upgraded hardshell case, a certificate of authenticity with a dedicated serial number, an official Fender product manual, a collectible American Design Experience booklet, strap, polishing cloth, instrument cable and adjustment wrenches.

Consumers are encouraged to share their personal instrument designs with their friends on Facebook, Twitter or Google+, or save their designs to be built at a later date. For more information and to begin designing a Fender American Design Experience instrument, visit www.fender.com/american-design.